What is Truth?

Hi everyone 👋🏼 this Sunday we are meeting at the Crescent club at 8pm. 

Peter Johnson has written this weeks blog:

This blog arises from a rather bruising discussion I had a few months ago. Things got really heated when I suggested that reason cried out that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. That inconsistencies existed and were to be expected given the way the Bible had come to be written. I said that this didn’t in any way affect my belief in God. 

Their reply was quite cutting… The Bible was God’s divine truth and authoritative word and was never to be questioned. One couldn’t pick and choose – to question any one bit was to question it all and in doing so one was calling God a liar. 

Afterwards I felt rather grubby. Was I calling God a liar? Was I doubting His word and questioning His integrity? Did I actually trust Him? I talked with Rob about it and he thought it would be a worthwhile topic for discussion. 

So here goes:
Q1. We begin with a question which seems especially relevant to our times, given that truth seems to be an increasingly rare commodity – the same question Pilate put to Jesus. What is truth?

Q2. Can there ever be justification for not telling the truth. Do you think God would ever do that? 

Q3. A Christian who lived in Indonesia was arrested for having a Bible in his possession. He was taken to a correction camp and after being beaten was forced to tear out the pages and drop them down the communal latrine one by one. He was then released and warned of the consequences of being caught with a Bible again. That night he broke into the camp, crawled into the latrine and extracted the pages of his Bible. He took them home and cleaned them up before putting them back together again, for the Bible was his most treasured possession. How do you feel about that story?

Q4. How do you feel about the viewpoint that in not taking everything literally you are calling God a liar. 

Q5. Do we just accept that God is truthful because of who He is, or is it ok to look for re-assurance? If so, where can we find that re-assurance?

Q6. For the people I spoke to, their faith was dependent upon a literal acceptance of the Bible and was so precious that if you took it away, they doubted if their faith would survive. Does your faith have the same basis and if not, what would you regard as most precious to your faith? 

Q7. How do you think God feels about such discussions?